Flak Magazine: Review of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 10-19-05

Nick Park's Gromit is the best non-human around. He's a perfectly versatile dog, capable of building a rocket, programming a robot, preparing breakfast and walking on his hind legs. Gromit is a sort of Gary Cooper-meets-Snoopy, a taciturn mutt (he never speaks) with way-of-the-world knowledge. Beyond that, Gromit, a pile of plasticine and clay, portrays emotion better than most real-live human actors; with a flip of his brow or a fist on his hip, he turns the tone of a scene on its ear. The star of three shorts and now the full-length feature The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Gromit is a complicated man, except that he is, in fact, a dog.

Wallace is Gromit's invention-loving … partner? Roommate? To call Wallace Gromit's owner feels like calling Blair Bush's peer; it only looks true on paper. At first glance, Wallace is positioned as the innovator with a passion for crackling contraptions. (Bungee window washing? Gnome garden alarm?) It's Gromit that proves to be truly creative, though, when he inevitably has to move Wallace out of the path of an invention gone bad. That's where Park cashes in — the first half of these films position Gromit as a sleuth, the second half as a knight in shining collar, saving the day by means of a breathless chase sequence. As Wallace's haplessness endangers all kinds of creatures, Gromit proves it again and again: he is man's best best friend.

The evolution of Park's form, though across only four films, supports the growth of Gromit Nation. The first Wallace and Gromit adventure, A Grand Day Out, featured both characters in equal share on a rather linear trip to the moon. By the second installment, The Wrong Trousers, Park had fully discovered and refined his reliable frame: Wallace's robo-pants and decision to take on a boarder (a villainous penguin) combine to throw Wallace into the grips of evil, and we follow Gromit as he uncovers the truth behind Wallace's seemingly innocuous lodger. The Wrong Trousers, like A Close Shave after it, closes with a furious flurry in which Wallace is held captive by a machine from his own mind, and Gromit swings in like a canine Indiana Jones. Park knows how to construct characters; the more frantic the situation, the more swiftly Gromit slices through it.

With a string of popular, Oscar-winning short films behind him, Park has made the transition to a feature, but rather than overcomplicating his approach with Hollywood shenanigans, Park and his co-writers simply took the original form and stretched it. Once again, Gromit has to sort out a blend of Wallace's failed invention (a thought-controlling helmet!) and bad decision (use it on rabbits by moonlight!).

The first three Wallace & Gromit films ran just under a half-hour each and consistently left the audience wanting more. Were-Rabbit delivers in just the same way; even after an adventure longer than the first three put together, it drives the appetite again beyond satiety. It depends in large part on Park's approach to humor — rather than take a primary laugh, encourage a secondary laugh and fish for a tertiary laugh (I'm looking at you, Shrek), Park aims to get all three laughs at once in an unbelievably funny moment, and then moves on. At one point in Were-Rabbit, Wallace is celebrating in a cheese tent. (A behavior that, I assure you, befits his love for the stuff.) Unfortunately, he's starkers. The serial approach for laugh-fishing would suggest milking this moment:

Perhaps first he'll grab some hunks of cheese to cover up, but then realize they resemble something inappropriate.
After that, he'll hide behind a curtain, only to have his rear available to the outside.
After that, maybe he frantically gallops around and takes refuge under a lady's dress.

Instead, Park hits you with all three laughs:

Oh, he's naked! Ha! How unexpected!
Oh, Gromit found him an empty cheese box for cover! Ha! How appropriate!
Oh, there's a sticker on the box that says "May Contain Nuts!" Ha! How funny!

All at once, it's gangbusters, and Nick Park compositions are littered with highlights like these. Park hits a high note and moves right on forward with the story. Further, Park strikes in-joke gold with Hutch, a Wallace-like rabbit who can only quote lines Wallace said during the previous films. Like the detailing of Gromit's character across the films, Hutch's mere presence suggests an expectation on Park's behalf that viewers of Were-Rabbit have been along for the full ride thus far.

Like his fellow islander J.K. Rowling and her limitless world of magic, Park's focus on invention removes all bounds. Wallace gets the crew into the zaniest of situations because, due to his calling as the next Rube Goldberg, he has created some of the strangest stuff imaginable. That's just it — it's only barely imaginable, and by maintaining a throughline of creativity, Park can come up with whatever tool he needs to unite the narrative. Naturally, an inventor would come with a porridge cannon that, in good narrative fashion, Gromit can later use to gun down the enemy. Of course he would develop a shearing-and-knitting machine on his own time. On paper, these are far-fetched, but because the viewer is granted permission to a household of innovation, it suits the story as perfectly here as it always has.

Instead of producing a "movie," Park produced a Wallace and Gromit short that happens to be 85 minutes long. Without knowledge of those previous shorts, Were-Rabbit is still a great ride, but the adroit and assured nature of that quiet dog might be totally lost. Across these four films, Park has developed a character that is more exciting to watch than the majority of action stars today. See The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but see the rest of Gromit's performances as well. He is, shall we say, a dog for the ages.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)